Justice John Paul the First

 The obituaries of Justice John Paul Stevens today make him out to be the leader of the liberal bloc on the Supreme Court. That's a little over the top, but over the top is standard for obits, and obits at age 99 provoke even more topping up.
 What Stevens was is a kind of Republican who no longer exists. He was appointed by President Gerald Ford, another Republican of the kind that no longer exists. The kind is the centrist Republican. Such, with centrist Democrats, are the people who made government work in this country before the role of government became messaging a temperamental diva's fragile ego.
 Justice Stevens was a centrist who stood still while the Court moved right. He retired expecting it to move back again. He died with it gone right for several more decades to come.
 One of the opinions for which he is being remembered is his dissent in the appalling Bush v Gore 2000 election case, which he ended by saying:

 Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.

(A bit more after the break:)



When he wrote that, he didn't imagine there would be worse to come. No one saw Sen. Addison Mitchell McConnell coming. The core of his dissent, though, came two paragraphs earlier. I reproduce it here with the legal citations removed.

  In the interest of finality, however, the majority effectively orders the disenfranchisement of an unknown number of voters whose ballots reveal their intent – and are therefore legal votes under state law–but were for some reason rejected by ballot-counting machines. It does so on the basis of the deadlines set forth in Title 3 of the United States Code. But, as I have already noted, those provisions merely provide rules of decision for Congress to follow when selecting among conflicting slates of electors. They do not prohibit a State from counting what the majority concedes to be legal votes until a bona fide winner is determined. Indeed, in 1960, Hawaii appointed two slates of electors and Congress chose to count the one appointed on January 4, 1961, well after the [U.S.Code] deadlines. Thus, nothing prevents the majority, even if it properly found an equal protection violation, from ordering relief appropriate to remedy that violation without depriving Florida voters of their right to have their votes counted. As the majority notes, “[a] desire for speed is not a general excuse for ignoring equal protection guarantees.”

Today Stevens would be simply a "never Trumper" with no home, no prospects of a home and no one likely to put him on the Supreme Court, which Mr. Ford considered the nomination for which he would like to be remembered.

When Pope John Paul II came to the United States, he was introduced to the justices. Hearing John Paul Stevens' name, the pope quipped, "Ah, John Paul III." One of the other justices' wives (Breyer's if I recall correctly) piped up, "To us, he'll always be John Paul the First."